Well... first any website that has "anti-state, anti-war, pro-market" as it's official motto strikes me as something that is only going to post articles conforming to a certain slant.

The article itself:

"U.S. intelligence has concluded that Iran is not working on nuclear weapons." - Says who? That's my community and I haven't heard this floating around.

"Iran insists its nuclear program is entirely for civilian use." - I'm going to start by saying I really don't care if Iran develops nukes, if I was Israel I'd care, but I'm not. That being said if their nuclear program was entirely for peaceful purposes why would they turn down the offers of the international communitiy to help them build light water reactors? It would provide the energy they say they are looking for and would be harder for them to make weapons.

"The highly regarded American journalist Seymour Hersh just confirmed that the U.S. Congress authorized a $400-million plan to overthrow Iran’s government and incite ethnic unrest."

From wikipedia article on Hersh: Some of Hersh's speeches concerning the Iraq War have described violent incidents involving U.S. troops in Iraq. In July 2004, during the height of the Abu Ghraib scandal, he alleged that American troops sexually assaulted young boys:

“Basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children, in cases that have been recorded, the boys were sodomized, with the cameras rolling, and the worst above all of them is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking. That your government has. They’re in total terror it’s going to come out

I was at abu ghraib - everything hersh is quoted as saying is total nonsense and basically in my mind discredits him as a reliable source of information. He also has plenty of alligations against him just citing anonymous sources with no way to prove they even actually exist... which is kind of what I feel the article's author is also doing.

"Other Pentagon and CIA sources say a U.S. attack on Iran is imminent, with or without Israel. The Bush administration is even considering using small tactical nuclear weapons against deeply buried Iranian targets."

The bunker busting nuke thing is going back to Seymour Hersh, who again I find totally uncredible.

"Senior American officers Admiral William Fallon and Air Force Chief Michael Mosley recently were fired for opposing war against Iran."

Fallon was fired for openly criticizing the Bush Admin in Esquire magazine. You can't do that when your an active duty military COCOM commander. That's for after you retire and become a talking head on TV. Mosley was fired because he openly criticized the airforce for the mishandling of nuclear weapons (the incident where nukes were unknowingly flown from Barksdale AFB to Someplace in the Dakotas I think) and for mistankingly shipping nuclear fuses to Taiwan. It had nothing to do with Iran like the article said.

"Intensifying activity is evident at U.S. bases in Europe and the Gulf, aimed at preparing a massive air blitz that may include repeated attacks on 3,100 targets in Iran."

According to what?

"In Washington, Congress, under intense pressure from the Israel lobby, is about to adopt a resolution calling for a naval blockade of Iran, an overt act of war.

Pro-Israel groups have been airing TV commercials claiming Iran is attacking American troops in Iraq and threatens the U.S."

I've heard nothing of congressional blockade talks and I've seen none of these tv commercials. That doesn't mean those commercials don't exist but I live in the DC area and if they want to influence politicians I would think those commercials would be playing around here.

"A single Iranian missile hit on Israel’s reactor would do more damage to the Jewish state than all its previous wars."

What reactor would he be speaking of?

Seriously, there's a few pieces of legit information in there but it reads like 90% propaganda.

"U.S. intelligence has concluded that Iran is not working on nuclear weapons." - Says who?

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Well, ... says the sixteen US intelligence agencies (... sixteen!) that produce the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE). You should read it!

Anyway, ... that report was declassified and published rather quickly at the insistence of these intelligence agancies as a pre-emptive strike against the White House to make it more difficult - politically, for POTUS to press ahead with his misguided agenda despite the evidence. Like the US armed forces, the intelligence services are in a state of near-mutiny as they watch Bush drag your country towards another unnecessary and unwinnable war.

That's my community and I haven't heard this floating around

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... and so, ... just perhaps this, strongly suggests that you are out of the loop of your community? No? You know, ... since you never heared of the NIE 'n such. No trouble at all...

What it actually says is that Iran's military was being actively directed by the government to develop nuclear weapons until 2003 at which point they stopped, probably due to international scrutiny. It then says that development had probably not begun again as of mid 2007. This was the parts of the NIE most picked up on by the news.

Section B. of the NIE then says that they assess with medium to high confidince that Iran has not aquired enough fissile material to develop a weapon. This is important

Section C. then says that centrifuge enrichment is probably how they would aquire the needed fissile material. This is also important and is the main concern of Israel and I guess the bush admin. They are continuing with civilian centrifuge development as stated in the NIE and the news.

Section D. says Iran is continuing to develop technical capabilities that could be applied to nuclear weapons if Iran chose to do so.

Section E. says the intel community has no real idea how long Iran plans to halt it's nuke weapons development. it then goes on to say:

"We assess with moderate confidence that convincing the Iranian leadership to forgo the eventual development of nuclear weapons will be difficult given the linkage many within the leadership probably see between nuclear weapon's development and Iran's key national securtiy and foreign policy objectives, and given Iran's considerable effort from at least the 1980's to 2003 to develop such weapons"

So, the statement "US intelligence has concluded that Iran is not working on nuclear weapons" is indeed wrong.

US intelligence has concluded that from 2003 to mid 2007 Iran's military was not being actively directed to work on nuclear weapons would be more accurate. However if they don't have the fissile material to weaponize in a warhead anyway shutting the mil program down doesn't mean that much. They are still devopling their missile tech as evidenced by the recent test firing of 9 missiles. And they are actively devolping their centrifuge capability, which could give them the needed fissile material in the future. This goes back to my point that if they really have no desire to devolp nukes in the future, as they say, why turn down the light water reactor offers. So you have a govt that is improving it's missile technology, trying to improve it's capability to aquire nuclear fissile material, and which the NIE states will most likely want nuclear weapons in the future. You put it all together.

Don't have to, ... story is quite clear! Take, for example, a comment from the NIE that the suspension of Iran's nuclear weapons program in 2003 in response to international pressure showed that Iran's decisions "are guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic and military costs". What a revelation!

Anyway, ... if you are rational - and by extension, just assume for a moment that folks running Iran are rational human beings and put yourself in their shoes, you can pretty easily figure out what their strategic concerns and priorities were, are and forever will be.

Most obviously, they wouldn't ever dream of attacking Israel with nuclear weapons, ... even if they had any! That would unleash a nuclear Armageddon on their own country. Israel has hundreds of nuclear weapons, and the only imaginable use for a few Iranian ones would be to deter Israel from a first strike because of the risk of Iranian retaliation. And why would Iran suddenly want such a deterrent, when it has been a target for Israeli nuclear weapons for at least thirty-some years?

We know that Ayatollah Khomeini cancelled the Shah's nuclear weapons programme after the revolution in 1979 because it was "un-Islamic" . We know that Iran started the program up again in the mid-80s during the Iran-Iraq war, when it became clear that Iraq was working on nuclear weapons, and that it stopped again after international inspectors declared Iraq nuclear-free - in 1994! Then, ... we somehow - vivid imagination, I guess, think that program was re-started once more in 1999 or 2000, and now we are told that it stopped again in 2003. What is that all about?

Well, ... Pakistan tested nuclear weapons in 1998 and then had a military coup, which must have worried the Iranians a lot. Then after 9/11, ... the U.S. began claiming that Iraq was working on nuclear weapons again, which must have frightened them even more. So Iran started working on nuclear weapons yet again, ... and then stopped in 2003, ... after Saddam Hussein was overthrown and Pakistan turned out to be relatively stable after all.

That was also the year when it became known that Iran was working towards a full nuclear fuel cycle for its civil nuclear power program. That's quite legal, of course, ... but as it also gives the possessor the potential ability to enrich uranium to weapons grade, Iran came under international pressure to stop - so it suspended the enrichment program for three years and stopped the weapons program.

It all makes perfect sense, of course, ... and you don't need a single spy (... or your entire community!), to figure it all out. In fact, given the motives of most spies, you're probably better off without them entirely, ...